New show offers insight into the private life of the landscape master

JMW Turner is revered as a genius landscape painter, the king of the turbulent maritime scene, but much less is known about the artist’s more private side – something the curators of a new exhibition aim to change.

Between the Sheets: Turner’s Nudes includes rarely seen erotic watercolour drawings made over the course of his career. The works will go on display in Turner’s former home in Twickenham and shine a different light on the artist.

“I think he was very interested in sex, and why shouldn’t he be?” said Franny Moyle, Turner’s biographer and co-curator of the project. “He was a human being like the rest of us.”

Some of the drawings are from life classes; others are more erotic, intimate bedroom scenes. “Parental or guardian discretion is advised,” visitors are warned.

A number of the drawings were made during Turner’s frequent visits to Petworth House in West Sussex in the 1820s and 1830s. Petworth was the home of Lord Egremont, an enthusiastic art collector and patron of Turner who is thought to have fathered at least 40 illegitimate children.

Jacqueline Riding, the show’s co-curator, said Petworth seems to have had “quite a free and easy environment. There was certainly no discouragement to a relaxed atmosphere.”

It was important to remember also, said Riding, that Turner, who lived from 1775 to 1851, was essentially a Georgian artist.

“I know he is often seen as Victorian because he lived into the Victorian age, but he was a Georgian with Georgian appetites.”

Riding was an adviser on Mike Leigh’s film Mr Turner, which brought home to her how little is known about the artist’s private life.

“We almost know minute by minute what Turner was doing in terms of sketching and travelling and exhibiting,” she said. “The one thing we really couldn’t find a lot of information about was his private life and even more so, his relationship with women.”

The drawings going on display offer tantalising glimpses into that private life. The subjects are thought to include his lover Sophia Booth, who ran a guest house on Margate seafront and secretly lived with Turner in Chelsea.

The later sketchbook drawings include sex scenes populated by otherworldly figures.

“They become looser, more experimental, sometimes much more explicit,” said Moyle. “Is that Turner exploring a form of art he thought he could never publish, or perhaps only publish between friends? Is this his own private collection in the way we might take intimate photographs or write a diary?”

The drawings are from the Turner bequest, the vast treasure trove looked after by Tate that includes about 30,000 sketches and watercolours. Only 100 of those are listed as intimate or erotic.

The works – which were made for Turner’s eyes only and never meant for public consumption – will be displayed in a bedroom at Sandycombe Lodge, the house Turner designed and lived in.

Riding said: “I don’t think Turner is known for his paintings of women, you always think of him as the painter of landscapes and seascapes, the broader view. Both of us hope that the display will make people think again about Turner.”